


kjære isak

by atthebarricade



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Does Isak Valtersen know that I and many of his friends would die for him, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11298939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atthebarricade/pseuds/atthebarricade
Summary: A love letter to Isak Valtersen in five parts.





	kjære isak

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man! I wrote this until 5 o'clock in the morning after the finale aired and hazily proof read it at 9 o'clock in the morning so apologies for any mistakes, especially switching between tenses because I know I didn't catch all those errors. I will not apologize for my blatant abuse of commas and semicolons, though.  
> Anyways, I love Isak Valtersen with all my heart and this is sort of my love letter to him, too, even though it's through the eyes of his friends.

When Jonas first meets Isak Valtersen, he’s so tiny. Jonas isn’t very big himself — not compared to some of the older boys he plays with, or to his cousins. But Isak is even smaller than him. In Jonas’s eyes, this means it’s Jonas’s job to look out for him. Because he’s bigger.

He takes his job very seriously, and he never forgets this solemn duty, even as they both grow larger. It seems to grate on Isak especially in middle school, where Jonas is suddenly working overtime to defend Isak from a bunch of assholes calling him stupid names that Jonas wishes weren’t in anyone’s vocabulary.

“Can you just _quit it_?” Isak snaps one day, taking Jonas aback. “There’s always gonna be dickheads in the world, and they’re always gonna be dickheads to me, and you’re not gonna be able to defend me from all of them, okay? That’s just the way it is. I don’t fucking care. But I don’t want it to mean that you have to get hurt! So just stop. If I need you, I’ll tell you.”

Jonas remembers the unfamiliar pain in his chest as Isak slammed his locker and stormed away, cheeks flushed and eyes shiny like he was trying not to cry. So, he backs off.

Their first year at Nissen he realizes he may have backed off a little too much. Elias is cool and older and has great weed, and even if he says shitty stuff every so often, he doesn’t mean it very seriously. So he tags along sometimes. For a long time, he doesn’t notice the way Isak flinches when Elias approaches, how he always immediately sits up straight and puffs out his chest a little and moves his hands nervously through his curls like he’s trying to shave them off. Later, he won’t have any idea how he missed the signs when they were _so fucking obvious_ and God, he’s a shitty friend.

He doesn’t even notice it for himself. It’s one night after he’s broken up with Eva and Isak is spending the night at his place to avoid his mom that he even brings it up.

“Hey, Jonas,” he says suddenly from where he’s reclining against Jonas’s pillows. His tone is trying for casual but falling very short, so Jonas pauses the game and looks at Isak over his shoulder.

“Hey, bro,” he responds, scooting around on the bed until he was facing Isak entirely. “Something up?”

Isak, clearly not expecting Jonas to actually stop his game, looks a little uncomfortable. “No, uh, I was just wondering if you had invited anyone else tonight.”

Jonas crinkles his brows. “No, of course not. Who else would I invite? It’s a boys’ night! We’re the boys!”

Isak smiles at that, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It doesn’t reach his eyes very much at all anymore, now that Jonas thinks about it. The same pain in his chest from that day in middle school makes a sudden and terrible reappearance.

“Like…Elias, I guess.” Jonas doesn’t miss the fact that Isak’s eyes flicker away from his as he says the name, and he doesn’t miss the way Isak fists his hands a little in Jonas’s comforter. “I mean,” he says with a forced little laugh that increases Jonas’s chest pain doublefold, “I was just wondering to make sure I had like, a warning. Just to like prepare myself or whatever.”

Prepare himself.

Isak lets out that awful fake laugh again. “Just ’cause you know how Elias can be.”

And, God, suddenly Jonas does. All those moments that he’s been overlooking are suddenly illuminated with the terrible glow of Isak’s expression, and Jonas feels like a shitbag.

“Nah, you don’t have to worry about that guy, Is, for real,” Jonas says suddenly, and Isak looks up at him. “He’s a fucking asshole. To everyone, and to you. So I’m just gonna get a new dealer, or whatever.”

Isak’s expression crushes Jonas. It’s bright enough to light up the whole fucking city of Oslo. “Yeah,” he says, and this time when he smiles his eyes crinkle just the littlest bit. “He is a fucking asshole.”

So, for a while, things are better.

Now, Jonas is always carefully aware of when Isak isn’t doing well. He tries to pick up on any information Isak offers about his home life to try and get a better handle of things, but he’s too afraid of Isak shutting him out completely to ever really pry. When Isak moves into Noora’s old place, he assumes the worst about his mother’s mental state.

He believes Isak when he suddenly starts ditching him and the boys, citing vague excuses about his mom and stress. He doesn’t pry.

He forgives Isak for skipping out on Magnus’s party, because at least the dark bags that had been permanently plaguing his face seem to finally be lightening up.

He doesn’t need to forgive Isak for shoving Mahdi, because he doesn’t get angry — just terribly, terribly concerned. When a week passes without a single word for Isak, he’s gearing up to storm Isak’s shared apartment himself. No matter how often Isak insisted that he was _fine_ , that he was perfectly capable of defending himself with Jonas’s help, there was still that instinct in him cultivated all those years ago when he noticed how much shorter Isak was than him.

When Isak finally comes back to school and Jonas looks over at him struggling with his locker, he realizes with a sudden pang that Isak pretty much towers over him now.

He gently sets the offer to talk in front of Isak, remaining chill, trying not to freak him out. When only a few days later Isak asks him to go out for kebob, he nearly pulls him into a hug then and there. It’s as they’re leaving Nissen together that Jonas feels a stare on his back and glances behind him to see that tall blond Kosegruppa kid watching them leave.

“I’ll give you a hint.”

“A hint?”

“It’s not a girl.”

And Jonas knew. He’s known. And he loves Isak. He loves Isak, so he doesn’t blink. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t gasp. Instead, he thinks of the blond boy watching them leave today, and asks for his name.

And he prays that maybe now Isak would finally let someone look out for him.

“Hey, man,” Jonas says as they’re getting ready to leave. Isak looks over at him expectantly. “Thanks for telling me. I know it was probably really hard, and I’m really grateful that you trusted me with this moment. And you know that I love you, right? No matter what.”

Isak doesn’t grin at him like before, but he nods seriously at Jonas. “Yeah, I know. And I love you too.” So they stroll away with Jonas’s old bike in tow.

-

When Eva first meets Isak, she’s annoyed. She really though Jonas had gotten the hint that this was a _date,_ and dates meant no friends tagging along. If she was still friends with Ingrid, she certainly wouldn’t have — well, obviously she wouldn’t have invited _Ingrid,_ but whatever. In general! Dates weren’t meant for friends.

She quickly becomes used to it, though, because Isak is rarely _not_ there. He’s practically there when they have sex, for God’s sake. In fact, he’s there often enough that Eva finds he’s growing on her pretty quickly. He’s funny, for one thing. He’s damn adorable, too.

So two often becomes three, and Eva finds she doesn’t mind too much. Sometimes it’s just her and Isak, chatting on Skype or hanging out at parties or in the cabin while Jonas is out doing whatever with Elias. Her affection for him only increases when he gives her advice on the whole Penetrator Chris thing. Throughout the entire mess, he’s the one constant support she can turn to for friendship.

Then, of course, it all comes crashing down. She can barely look at him when she finds out what he’s done, and her confusion only increases when Noora shares her porn discovery on his phone. Because Isak — and _Jonas?_ Nothing about it will compute in her mind, so she lets it be. She doesn’t want the resentment in her to fester, either, so instead she forces herself to come to terms with it late one tearful night and move on.

She’s mostly surprised at how often she misses him. She’d always taken his presence for granted back when they were still close, the way Jonas had seemed like her forever love. It would always be her, Jonas, and Isak.

She does some embarrassing things while drunk at a party that she mostly tries to forget about, stuffing the emotion in the same corner of her mind where she stores her feelings for Jonas and loss of Isak. Chris and her friends are good distractions, though, and when she chats with both of her former boys at William’s party that early summer it barely stings at all. Really, it feels like nice closure before the summer break. Mostly she mourns the loss of Isak’s beautiful curls.

Then fall rolls back around again just as it always does and when Eva catches a glimpse of Isak she feels as if she’s been punched in the gut. Because _holy shit._ Isak got hot over the summer. It does not go unnoticed among the rest of her friends, especially Chris.

“Oh, God, please tell me you aren’t going over there to seduce him with a spoon,” Eva groans as Chris gets up from her seat to approach Isak’s table.

“Of course not! I’m just going to invite them to your party.”

“Oh, by all means.”

She doesn’t see much of Isak at her party but he doesn’t get arrested or get her arrested and that’s all that really matters, in the end. In fact, she barely sees him all fall, with the except of a few Kosegruppa meetings and pregames. He seems to have a thing going on with a first year. Eva’s still not entirely sure exactly which way he swings, but she prays that he’s doing the best he can to protect himself. She prays Jonas is doing his best, too.

Months later when Vilde squeakily runs up to her waving her phone around like a madwoman, whisper-shouting something about Isak and Even the third year (who hasn’t been to a Kosegruppa meeting in ages _,_ which is rude) she only allows herself to feel delight and not surprise. Even’s fucking hot. She says as much to Isak.

His replying smirk makes her laugh. God, she’s missed him. She did an excellent job of suppressing it all these months but now, with him in front of her and looking so brightly happy, she feels a little more complete.

“Life is now,” she repeats, nodding wisely. “You and Even smoke a lot of weed together, Isak?”

He laughs, loud and unrestrained, and she reaches forward to pull him into a hug. His arms move up to encircle her and they squeeze each other for a moment. Suddenly she’s in first year again. She forgot how Isak’s hugs had the power to make you feel like everything would be alright.

“Okay,” she finally whispers, pulling away slightly. “Your boy is pouting at us. Go appease him.”

Isak laughs again. “I will. But really, Eva. Text me anytime. I’d love to see you. I miss you.”

“Aw, Isak,” Eva said. “I miss you too.” She squeezes his shoulder and drops the teasing tone. “I’ll text you. Really.”

Isak smiles warmly at her and even though his jawline is sharper now, his cheeks less full and his chest a little broader, that smile still makes him look like the little Isak she always knew—

“and loved.”

Isak’s getting to his feet and blushing, waving her off embarrassedly.

“You won’t even say it back?” Eva calls up to him and he sights dramatically, bending down to press a quick kiss to her cheek.

“I love you back, Eva Kviig Mohn,” he says, and some part of the universe tilts just a little bit on its axis so that the world seems righter.

 -

When Eskild first meets Isak, he doesn’t really _meet_ him. Chatting on Insta doesn’t count as meeting. Grindr might, though. But he doesn’t talk to Isak on Grindr, so. Irrelevant.

But when he first talks with Isak, he knows that the girls were wrong. He actually assumed that Isak would block him after messaging for a bit. It’s a shame, really — he was really cute. Certainly not Eskild’s type, because he was practically a baby, but it was always nice to have really cute ones in the community.

It’s when he meets Isak for the first time in person that he begins to question his initial judgement. His first clue is that Isak is at a gay bar.

“Oh, I know you!” Eskild says with sudden recognition. “Isakyaki, right?”

Isak whipped around to face Eskild, terror written clearly on his face. Eskild suddenly realized that shouting out people’s social media handles in the middle of a gay bar might not be a wise decision, but it’s too late to take it back. Oh well.

“Sorry!” he says. “Didn’t mean to scare you. But—” he lowers his voice this time— “you are, right?”

“Do I know you?” Isak says, his voice slurring, and that’s when Eskild first realizes that he’s drunk. Like, incredibly drunk. As he takes this in, he begins to realize just how vulnerable Isak is right now. He’s alone, young, intoxicated, and obviously scared out of his mind.

“Uh, sort of,” Eskild says. “We chatted? On Instagram? It was a few weeks ago.”

Isak sort of squints at him then and he regains a little color in his face. “Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, Ek—Esk—?”

“Eskild.”

“Eskild, right,” Isak says, still not quite getting it right. Eskild frowns at him.

“You’re kind of young to be all alone and drunk in a gay bar, Isakyaki,” Eskild notes.

Instantly his eyes go wide. “Uh — it’s a gay bar? I mean…I didn’t realize. I just kind of stumbled in here. I didn’t even see.”

“Sure,” Eskild says. “It’s very hard to miss.” There’s not a single woman in the club. “Have you thought about going home? It’s getting late, you know.”

The boy shakes his head immediately. “No. I’m not going home.”

“No?” repeats Eskild. “Then a friend’s, maybe? A relative’s?”

To his horror, Isak’s eyes begin to fill with tears. “I — there’s nowhere to go,” he says, still shaking his head. “I can’t — I don’t — I don’t know where to go. But I can’t go home. Please,” and Eskild wonders why this boy, his voice cracking with desperation, is pleading with him as if Eskild was some sort of authority figure who could actually make him return home. “I can’t go back there.”

That is clue number two.

“Okay,” Eskild says soothingly, placing his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “You don’t have to go home. Okay? But you can’t just stay here all night, either. Soooo…you can come home with me. I guess.”

Isak’s tears have mostly dried up, but now the alarm returns to his eyes. “Um, I’m not — you know — I mean, I’m straight, so.”

Eskild rolls his eyes. “Of course you are! And that’s not what I meant, silly boy. I meant come stay the night _very platonically_ in my flat. Okay? And then you can figure it out from there. But you can’t just wander around here by yourself while you’re drunk.”

“Um, okay,” Isak finally says. Had he been more sober or less desperate, Eskild is sure that Isak would never agree to his offer. But he is that drunk, and he is that desperate, so they leave for the kollektiv together.

By the time Isak finally graduates from the basement to Noora’s old room, Eskild thinks he already understands him. He’s closeted, deeply, and very grumpy. He’s not very clean, he’s not good at buying his own food, and Eskild misses Noora.

Still. There are moments where Isak manages to surprise Eskild.

Moments like when Isak offers to make him tea while he’s sick. Eskild declines, because he knows Isak has no clue how to make tea, but the thought touches him. Moments like when Isak frowns concernedly at a chip in Eskild’s nail polish and mentions that he remembers seeing that color in the bathroom cabinet the other day, if Eskild wanted to touch it up. Moments like when Isak comes out to Eskild, and when he apologizes for what he said about not being _gay_ gay; moments like when Isak crawls home after some new disaster with Even and accepts Eskild’s embrace.

Eskild is a crier, he won’t deny it, but he generally manages to keep it together around Isak. He needs to be strong for his little baby gay. To set an example. He’s one of the very few gay influences in his life, after all, and it’s a responsibility he takes very seriously. Mostly. At least he’s more serious now when Isak asks him for advice.

So when Isak asks to talk to him one morning when it’s just the two of them in the flat — a rare occurrence with practically five of them living all together, especially when one of them is clinically depressed and the other surgically attached to Isak’s hip — he assumes it’s to consult with his best and only guru. Then Isak tells him he’s moving out.

“Is it something I did?” Eskild demands weepily. “Because I can change! Is it because I’m mean about your smell? I’ll stop. It’s gotten so much better since Even — oh! I can’t even say his name! This is his fault!”

Isak watches him with a mixture of amusement and concern. “It’s not his _fault,_ Eskild. Besides, you’re always saying that too many people live here. Now Noora can have her room back.”

“Oh, who cares about Noora!” Eskild cries. “You’re my little gay protégé. Who will teach you the arts of homosexuality if you leave?”

Now Isak just looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “I think Even will manage to keep me pretty up-to-date.”

Eskild gasps. “That better not be an inappropriate joke, little Isak. I can’t believe it! You haven’t even moved out of the nest yet and you’re corrupted.”

Isak shook his head and shifted on his chair to sit on his crossed legs. “Well, I’m glad to know I have your support, guru.”

Eskild huffed and reached out to (lovingly) smack at Isak’s hands. “Oh, baby gay, you know that I’m happy for you and your wonderful boyfriend. I’m just sad that you’re leaving me here all alone.”

“Alone with Noora and Linn, you mean.”

“Alone with _the straights_.”

That managed to get a real, loud laugh from Isak. Eskild grins back at him, thinking of a time when Isak would have frozen up with terror to hear the monolith.

“I’m sorry, Eskild. Can’t relate, though. That’s, like, the opposite of what I’m doing.”

“Ugh, yes, Isak, we get it, you’re moving in with your wonderful and delicious and romantic older boyfriend, stop rubbing it in. How you got this lucky on your first shot, I’ll never know.”

“Me neither,” Isak admitted, and Eskild glanced up at him, noting the soft blush on his cheeks and disgustingly fond expression in his eyes. He sighs and reaches out to pat Isak’s hand.

“Good luck out there in the big, bad world, my sweet baby Jesus. Don’t forget about me.”

Isak’s blush only deepens and he pats Eskild’s hand back, sort of — mostly he just awkwardly cups them. “I won’t. And — thank you. For protecting me from the big, bad world, when you found me. I have no idea…” he stops, blowing out a long breath. “I have no idea what would have happened to me if you hadn’t found me. And there isn’t a day that I don’t think about it. And not just, like, if someone who cared about me hadn’t found me — I mean if it wasn’t you, cause you’re the one who taught me…about boys, and how to be proud. And so thanks, Eskild. For everything.” He finally glances up, and Eskild can barely see his sweet angel face through his tears.

“Oh, _Isak,_ ” he says, getting up and moving around the table to grab him into a hug. “I love you, you sweet baby boy.”

Isak huffs but Eskild hears him sniff. “I love you too, guru.”

And he hugs him back.

-

When Marianne Valtersen first meets Isak, he’s two weeks early. It scares her. She just wants her baby boy to be safe.

“It’s okay, Mari,” Terje says to her in his soothing tone. “He’s only a little early. Want to know when you delivered him? It was 21:21 on the 21st. He’s our little miracle man.”

The nurse returns just then with little baby Isak, and Marianne’s heart fills with joy like she’s never felt before. Of course. Of course he was her little miracle.

As Isak ages so sweetly, she becomes more and more convinced. His hair grows in golden and curly, his cheeks round and rosy. Her sweet little Isak. Her most precious gift from God. The joy that he brings her — the wonderful light and peace that she gets just from his sleepy little voice — she only wants to share it with him, and she knows that the Lord would be able to give it to him just as He gave it to her.

And there are times where she looks up at her baby and sees suddenly that he’s grown without her even noticing, like she accidentally flipped ahead a few chapters of Isak’s story. It terrifies her — she doesn’t want to miss a single world, a syllable. She fights hard to stay focused, to stay with Isak, but more often things slip just slightly out of her control.

When Terje leaves and takes his soothing voice with him, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the things living under the bed, she misses more and more chapters each time. She cries out in terror because she’s _losing him,_ losing her boy —

And then he really is gone. She doesn’t know since when or for how long, but she goes to bed one night and Isak never comes home the next afternoon, or the one after that. He doesn’t come home for weeks. Sometimes her search for him is interrupted by the page-flipping again, lapses in control that slow down her progress, but she’s desperate to bring him home. She sends him Bible verses in the hopes of sharing some of the joy she still gets from her nightly readings, but he never replies.

Each night when she lays down and closes her eyes she conjures up Isak’s image in her mind, fondly recreating the outline of his golden curls and remembering how light he was in that moment of 21:21, so new and young and precious and _hers._

Terje swears to her that Isak will be there at the Christmas concert and she uses the knowledge as an anchor to keep her in control. She goes out and buys a few calendars, even, to keep track of the days until she gets to see him again.

She has also given up hope that Isak will ever acknowledge her texts when one day, the sun shining a little more than usual, she receives a text from Isak. She looks out the window at the sun and smiles. Nothing is ever a coincidence.

_To Isak my son; from the first second I saw you on June 21st 1999 at 21:21 I have loved you and I will always love you for all eternity._

As she sends it, she wonders what the boy on the receiving end of it looks like. He could be a completely different boy now, she thinks. She might not even recognize him on the street. Those thoughts terrify and overwhelm her, so she doesn’t think about it often.

She gets to see him briefly at the concert, just as Terje promised. All too soon, though, he’s looking at his phone and rushing away, whispering a few excuses about a friend who needs his help. When he leaves, Marianne bows her heads and prays to God that she gets to see him soon.

He answers, of course, and Isak comes over on Christmas. They hug for what feels like years and the pages stop fluttering, for once, and just settle open on whatever chapter of Isak’s life he’s writing now. She holds him close and listens to him whisper in her ear, watches him tidy up a little and feels the kiss he presses to her cheek before he leaves with promises to return soon.

He does. He comes back, and back, and back, each time looking a little brighter, and little bit more like than sunshine boy from Heaven gifted to her 17 years ago. He stops in on the day before his birthday and spends the entire afternoon with her, answering her inquiries after Even with a blush and holding her hand almost the whole time he’s there.

“Oh, my Isak,” she sighs one day, and he looks up at her with a shy expression, looking every inch that little boy she’s loved from the moment she laid eyes on him. “I love you, my son.”

Isak’s eyes warm and he squeezes her hand. “I love you too, Mamma.”

-

When Even first meets Isak, he falls in love.

He knows immediately that that’s what it is. He isn’t being dramatic or letting his directorial instincts get the better of him. His first day at Nissen, he leans against the outer brick wall and tries to look cool rather than desperately lonely. His episode ended weeks ago but there’s still that terrible emptiness inside of him, tickling his insides and threatening to swallow him whole. He resists the urge to pull out his phone and text his Bakka boys, begging them to forgive him and take him back. Instead, he fiddles with the sleeve of his jean jacket.

It’s sheer coincidence that he rolls his head over to the right just as the boy’s leaving Building A. There’s a gaggle of guys around him, all chatting animatedly with each other, but the one boy’s expression is a little more serious. He squints in the sudden light and does a little hop in place to get his backpack to settle in a more comfortable position on his shoulders, followed by a quick shake of his head to fix his tumbling curls. In a series of three quick motions, Even’s a goner.

It takes a while, sure, and there are some bumps in the road, but soon enough Even knows that Isak loves him back. He learns it a little bit in that pool, a little bit in Isak’s bed, a lot when he sees Isak stroll across that darkened courtyard and cup Even’s face and bring him back warmly to Earth. They share a hundred thousand moments together, too many for Even to store on SD cards or even in his swelling heart. There’s nothing Isak does that doesn’t knock Even off his feet. He sucks the very air out of Even’s lungs. He’s never felt like this before.

“Hmm,” Even says one night, running his fingers through Isak’s newly short hair. “I miss your curls.”

“Hmm,” a very sleepy Isak mumbles back. “They miss you too.” It doesn’t make very much sense, but Isak’s exhausted, so Even lets it slide.

“I hope they do,” he says instead, watching as Isak slips back into unconsciousness. He tilts his head around, surveying the still-unfamiliar walls of their new apartment, looking for the best place to hang their miscellaneous papers and start making the small flat feel something like home. He’s reasonably sure that they could live in a literal box on the streets of Oslo and it’d still feel like home as long as Isak was there, but he also thinks that Isak would appreciate it if he had four actual walls to associate with the word. He deserves that, at least.

So when Isak finally wakes up for real they set about taping up the carefully packed folder of drawings and printouts that Even had prepared before they moved. Isak moves obediently around the chosen spot, remaining patient with Even even as he has Isak rearrange the clippings about a hundred times before he finally feels satisfied.

“It’s beautiful,” Even declares, wrapping an arm around Isak as soon as his boyfriend makes his way back over to his side. “I like this better than what either of us had up at our own places.”

“I don’t know,” Isak says teasingly, tilting his head in mock criticism. “I just don’t think it feels complete without my swimsuit model.”

Even huffs a surprised laugh. Isak threw that photo out on New Year’s Eve. “You can always pose for me in your swimsuit and I’d gladly tape it up here,” Even offers. Isak rolled his eyes and makes a rather admirable attempt at shoving him away with one hand while the other remained firmly wrapped around Even’s waist to keep him in place.

As time goes on, some photos are taken down and more are added. Several group shots are hung up; Even manages to sneak Jonas’s Insta pic of the boys topless into the collage. They almost add a photo taken of the two of them at Sana’s Eid party by a sneaky Chris Berg, of all people — their heads are touching, Even’s hand gently resting near Isak’s neck, and they’re looking up at Jonas with intensity as they listen to his speech. They frame that one instead.

Every day when Even comes home, he looks at it and remembers how fucking lucky he is. It replaces that gaping loneliness he felt on his first day with a tremendous joy, overwhelming gratitude, love like nothing he’d ever felt or seen or read about or watched before. Even Luhrmann’s epic romances paled in comparison to the sweet domesticity he and Isak have cultivated here.

He’s terrified that their coziness will be shattered once Even graduates from university and they finally move into a larger apartment. Their photo collage is the last thing to be take down and packed away, and he spends a long moment staring at it with Isak curled into his side before reaching forward and gently peeling them off the wall. There’s no point in trying to save them from their new place; the tape will get them all stuck together and if he tries to peel that off, it’s more likely that the papers will just rip.

“Don’t be sad, baby,” Isak whispers in his ear, pressing a soft kiss to his cheekbone. “We’re going to start a new one and it’s going to be even bigger and more epic, okay? It’ll be so epic and sweet that it’ll make angels cry. That’s how good this new one is going to be.”

“I like that,” Even murmurs, turning to reciprocate the cheek kiss. “Even’s and Isak’s home: so epic and sweet that it’ll make angels cry. Shall I get that printed on a welcome mat?”

“Of course not,” Isak scoffs, “I’ve already got it ordered.”

Even laughs at that and drops the final paper into the little box Isak had brought up for the job before packing it up and handing it to his boyfriend.

“Here. You hold it.”

And because Isak is the whiniest boy he knows, he immediately begins to complain about the strenuous task of holding the box, and hasn’t he carried enough boxes already today, Evy, and they are mostly Even's photos anyway —

Then Isak cuts himself off with a shriek as Even scoops him up suddenly and carries him out of their bedroom over to the front door, bridal style.

“Uh, baby?” Isak says after he’s recovered from the shock. “I think you’re supposed to carry me over the threshold of the _new_ place.”

“Isak, it wounds me that you think I can only carry you over certain thresholds as dictated by heterosexual traditions,” Even says. “I’m gonna carry you across every threshold ever, so. Get used to it.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.”

They don’t actually get around to recreating their collage that day, because they have no photos printed out and someone (Mahdi) loses the tape anyway. Once all their friends leave and the pizza boxes are cleared away, each moment reminiscent of the time they moved into their first place, they only manage to collapse onto their bed (the first thing they built once they got all their boxes in, having learned from prior mistakes). After that, it’s a matter of finding the time Even knows they need to properly construct the new picture wall. Plus, they still have no tape.

So it’s a surprise to him when he opens the front door a few days after they officially move in and immediately steps on a photo of his own face. He glances up from it in confusion and spots another photo directly ahead, this time of him and Isak. The more he glances around, the more photos he spots — some of them are wallet sized while others take up nearly a full sheet of regular computer paper. No matter their size, they’re making a clear trail from the kitchen into the living room. He smiles fondly as he follows along and collects them all, pausing each time to relish in each memory. Isak and Even at the zoo; in Isak’s old bedroom, in their old apartment; at parties and weddings and dinners, on campus, kissing in some and embracing in others, lots of selfies and a few candids taken by their friends. A few of them are in color, even, but Even can’t really discern a pattern as to which ones are. Eventually the trail in the living room and through the small hallway ends up at their closed bedroom door where there hangs one of Even’s favorite photos of all time — him and Isak in Morocco, Isak tinted slightly red from his irresponsible use of sun cream but absolutely beaming at the camera as he stands next to Even, their fingers tightly intertwined. Even, meanwhile, is looking fondly over at Isak, for once paying little notice to the camera. He gently peels it from the door and opens it, unsure of what to expect on the other side.

What he finds is an enormous and all-color explosion of photos on the back wall of their bedroom. Dozens if not hundreds of photos line the entire area of it, like a tornado of memories had been caught in their room and left its mark. Interspersed with the photos of them and their friends and families are a few cringey but familiar memes, quotes, and Even’s favorite _alt er love_ graphic. It’s so much to take in at once that it takes him a moment to focus in on Isak, standing in front of it all and looking very nervous.

“ _Baby,_ ” Even whispers. He’s not sure if he was even loud enough for Isak to hear but he must be because in an instant Isak is by his side, lacing their fingers together and tilting his head up to rub his nose against Even’s.

“You like it?” he asks nervously, and Even nearly has a conniption.

“Isak, of course I like it — I _love_ it, I can’t believe it, it’s like…” He moves them forward closer to the wall and gently trails his fingers along it. “It’s like a huge storyboard for the movie about us.”

Isak smiles fondly at the images before them. “You’re right.”

Even finally tears his gaze away from the mass of photos and turns his attention fully to Isak, the way his eyes seem bright with emotion and the bags under his eyes all but gone.

“Isak,” Even says, and for a moment it’s the only word he can speak, the only word he knows. “Will you wait for me? For a moment?”

Isak’s brows crinkle but he nods and Even moves away from him for a moment and into the kitchen, hopping onto the counter to reach into a cabinet too tall for even him to reach and tugging out his spare jar of teabags. He retrieves what he was looking for and returns to Isak.

He doesn’t even give Isak and moment to question what he was doing before Even’s before his boyfriend and down on one knee. Isak’s eyes go comically wide.

“Isak,” Even begins, and he’s got this because he has to — he’s rehearsed it a million times, expertly adjusted all the angles and lighting and everything is perfect because Isak is here and that’s all it takes. “Isak, I know that you’re a man of science, and fact, and you know that I’m more suited to dealings with emotion and fate, but this isn’t just about me right now, so let me make my case. I don’t know what the scientific community’s consensus on the existence of soulmates is—” and it’s at this point that Isak bursts into tears and it’s all Even can do to remain kneeling before him, desperate to get the words out before he loses it — “but if it’s evidence you’re looking for then I’d like to present the two of us as a case study because baby, from the moment I saw you on my first day I fell so ridiculously in love with you and I wake up each morning loving you even more than I did when I fell asleep the night before. I used to be scared that one day I’d love you so much my heart would burst but then I realized my love isn’t just in my heart but in my fingertips where I touch you, and my lips where I kiss you, and in my eyes and ears and every single cell in my body — that’s some biology for you — and now I know that I won’t run out of room because everything that I am made out of already exists to love you, and I’m rambling now and I need to take a breath—” he does so in an incredibly dramatic fashion, drawing a watery giggle from Isak — “and so please, Isak Valtersen, the absolute joy and love of my life, would you do me the tremendous honor of marrying me?”

And Isak, his sweet and ineloquent boy, responds with an ethusiastic “holy fuck _yes,_ ” and basically collapses on top of Even, the two of them creating a probably embarrassingly-in-love pile of crying boys.

“I love you, fiancé,” Isak gasps, and Even captures his lips in a kiss.

“You deserve to be the most loved person in the whole world,” Even replies, and it’s dramatic but damn if Even doesn’t mean every word of it. “And so many people do love you. But more than anything, _I_ love you, Isak Valtersen.”

And inside, Isak’s heart glows.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Come say hi over on Tumblr at lesbiankirk.


End file.
